As the Internet and associated web services evolve, there is a movement to associate telephony calls with certain web applications. In click-to-call (C2C) scenarios, a call tag used to initiate a telephony call may be provided in a web page, which is supported by a web client, such as a browser, of the user's terminal. When a user selects the call tag, the web client may initiate the call by sending appropriate instructions to the web server. The web server may then instruct a call server to establish the call between the user terminal and a remote endpoint or between another terminal associated with the user and the remote endpoint. Whether the telephony call is established with the user's terminal providing the web client or another terminal associated with the user may be controlled by the user.
In many C2C call scenarios, the call tags provided in the web pages are associated with commercial entities, and as such, the calls initiated upon selecting the call tags are directed to these commercial entities. A large percentage of commercial entities employ automated attendant systems, which automatically answer and process incoming calls. In many instances, the automated attendant systems are used to route the calls to automated or human agents. If such agents are not immediately available when calls are answered, the calls are placed into a queue. The queued calls are routed to the appropriate agents as the agents become available.
The amount of time a caller remains in a queue, and thus has to wait for an agent, is often significant. Although the commercial entity has direct and valuable access to the caller during the caller's wait, the ability to provide useful information, advertising information, entertainment, or a combination thereof has proven to be quite limited. All of this information is generally provided over the voice connection that was established for the call. In many instances, the same audio-based information or entertainment loop is provided to all callers that are in the queue. Other callers may simply receive an audible message that provides an estimate of the remaining wait time. The ability to provide different information to different callers or to provide a broader spectrum of information to the callers is limited. The ability to provide information in a format other than an audible format is even further limited. In addition, while the caller is waiting on the phone for a free human agent, the commercial entity is typically paying for the telecommunication charges, incurring significant cost.
Accordingly, there is a need for a way to provide more appropriate useful information, advertising information, entertainment, or a combination thereof to callers when they are in a queue waiting for an agent. There is a need to provide information of different types and in different formats to the callers. There is further need to provide such information in a C2C call environment in an efficient and effective manner. There is also a need to provide an option to place a C2C call request in the queue waiting for an agent and delay the setup of the phone call until such time as there is a human agent available to talk to the caller.